And luckily we've been quite busy...
Not wanting to break a working pattern, we decided this summer to go on a road trip in Europe, in an attempt to ¨relax/ have an adventure/ visit at least 2 countries we both wanted¨.
Deciding which countries to go to took a bit of negotiation, but as soon as this was out of the way, we could not wait for the days to pass until vacation started.
It turns out that planning a road trip is no easy task; one needs to check the map, decide how the driving turns are split, research the scenic alternatives to highways (where available for search), find nice places to stay, plus interesting things to do ... and the list goes on and on.
It's quite some effort and one shouldn't really plan every little detail, as most times the joy of the adventure is in chance discoveries.
Our road trip was quite a lot to take in, both due to the charming and interesting destinations, as well as to the complexity of a trip expanded over 2 weeks and a half.
In the end, we managed to see quite a lot of what we wanted, and more, which was amazing; but it took quite a toll on our energy levels, with exhaustion building up in stages and us ending up completely drained on the last night of the trip ... on a ferry from Denmark to Norway, in the middle of quite a severe storm... but that's a different story.
Here's the Öresund bridge which links Malmö (Sweden) to Copenhagen (Denmark), a breath taking view and a refreshing sight after a 600 km drive.
We actually drove for quite a while through a spectacular curtain of thick fog that came out of nowhere (and looked like a movie set) a few hours before getting to the bridge, but we were too puzzled by it to take out the cameras and take pictures. I wish we did ...
We spent the first night in a small town in Denmark, Kolding, which had a charming castle in the center, a feature we are quite accustomed to since moving to Sweden ...
From there we drove to Germany, where we visited Hamburg and Köln.
Next, we headed to France ... what a country!! :)
Our first destination was the beautiful village of Honfleur, in the north, which was also our base for exploring Mont Saint Michel. From there we went to Caen, then Paris, which was all I expected and more ... at least for me.
We also found the time to stop for a few hours in Rennes, on the way back to Germany.
We also got to check Luxembourg off the list while on the way to Germany.
Going back into Germany felt familiar in a way and even though we started to feel a bit tired, we could not wait to get to this new stage of our trip... Eisenach, then Berlin.
The last part of our trip was in Skagen, Denmark - a place of dreams... We're definitely going back there again.
